Counterfeit Watchmakers on the Internet

“Replica Rolex,” “Replica Cartier,” “Replica Breitling”…our inboxes are full of these offers and more like “cheap viagra,” “herbal enhancers,” and “generic cialis,” to name a few. Today I’d like to focus on the counterfeit watch industry.

How many faux watch retailers are there online? How do these counterfeit sites work? How much do counterfeit watchmakers hurt brands? This article provides you with a few answers based on what we found out through our work for our clients in the upscale watch business.

A plethora of counterfeiter websites, but only a handful of sellers

A simple “Replica Watch” Google search returns more than 6 million hits. It’s quite easy to get lost in the 6 million choices. However, a quick look at the first search results shows that in most cases the counterfeit websites are part of a vaster group of counterfeit websites that sell counterfeit watches, luxury accessories, sport shoes, and medicines. By grouping the websites accordingly, we can see that these 6 million websites are in fact run by about a few dozen competitors.

If we consider search engine visibility for these websites, in other words their search egine position for searches having to do with luxury watches, it would appear that a mere 5 companies share more than half the top results places, and as such, half of the market.

Sellers in this ripe market are becoming more and more professional

It’s true, we do find mom and pop sellers here and there that are looking to make a few dollars by reselling a few counterfeit watches on the Internet, but the general trend is for the selling process to be as professional as possible: special importance is put on website design, optimization, and visibility. These sellers are masters at e-commerce and sometimes their websites are more sophisticated and more visible in search engines than even sellers of authentic watches. After seeing a few such websites, it seems clear that some Internet professionals decided to use their knowledge to reap profits from this very ripe market.

Serious damage to brands and buyers

It is estimated that tens of millions of counterfeit watches enter the market each year. A large majority of these watches are sold as is, at prices that leave no doubt as to their lack of authenticity. It might seem that such sales don’t harm customers since they know they are buying a fake, and that they don’t steal potential customers from brands either since it is unlikely that someone who pays $200 for a faux Rolex would actually be a potential $20,000 authentic Rolex customer.

While it’s true that faux watches don’t hurt luxury watch sales to the same extent that applications like e-mule affect CD sales, faux luxury sales hit at the heart of a brand: its image. These millions of faux products pushed into the market each year reduce a luxury brand’s image of exclusivity. This has the potential to reduce sales. The buyer of faux luxury watches is often disappointed with his or purchases, too. Once customers have received their purchases, they often find that the quality of the faux watches is much lower than the seller had advertised.

Adapted by: Jessica Hartstein

Tags: counterfeit, luxury watches, watches

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This entry was posted by V. Drappier on Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 at 6:12 pm and is filed under Brand news, Web Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.